A binder full of 20 women Senators

The election on Tuesday of five new women to the U.S. Senate, four of them Democrats, means that the 113th Congress will have 20 female senators, the most ever in U.S. history.

There has been a steady increase in the number of women in the Senate, but this was expected to change this year when Republican Senators Kay Bailey Hutchinson (Texas) and Olympia Snowe (Maine) retire.